¶ … Anna in the Tropics" by Nilo Cruz is about literature and the role it plays for humanity, about the war between sexes, about similarities and more importantly, about differences in humans, about divide and reconciliation, about love and the way every different human being understands love in a different way. Two worlds are trying to reconcile, to find a common ground, to merge and go on in this play. On one hand, there is the huge gap between old traditional Cuba and modern USA, on the other there is the gap between what technology has done to the modern world and the old way of living. "Anna in the Tropics" tackles all these and a great deal more. Men and women, tradition and modernity, north and south, are forced to deal with one another in a way humanity seems to have never seen before. The twentieth century, with all its technological progresses, feels like the beginning of the end. Yet, human nature, implacably, stays the same. It is a major time of crisis in the history of the world and this play is able to capture it in its entirety vividly and extremely convincing. The parents, Ofelia and Santiago, although in a difficult moment of their life, businesswise, are the soundest couple in the entire play. The fact that they are the oldest couple in the play does not really support a thesis that they are wiser in any way, they seem to have found the perfect recipe for a successful marriage. The only shadow on this picture is Santiago's gambling, but it will luckily prove a temporary thing. The couples older daughter, Conchita, on the other hand, is trying to find out how to show her love again to her husband and bring him back from a relationship he is currently entertaining with another woman. Cheche, Santiago' half-brother, has been left by his wife, who ran away with another. A very interesting character, Juan Julian, the lector, will arrive in the cigar factory Santiago and his wife owned, to do his job, reading to the cigar factory workers while they were rolling their cigars, and place everybody's world upside down. The written word, in its artistic form, shows its power to challenge, to change, to make people want to confront their worst fears, it shatters the world to its core.

The best writers have always proven to be those who were great at knowing the human psyche. Besides knowing humanity better than most and being able to out it in writing, the genius writers have also proven to have vision. Not accidentally will Anna Karenina, a masterpiece of the universal literature, be the book that will make things move when they seemed to be stuck. Juan Julian, the lector, will die in the end, after having fulfilled his duty: that of awakening the sleeping spirits of humanity in all these characters found in different stages of their life, on the verge of crisis.

Since modernity has brought along the questioning of millennia old values and, most importantly, psychology has started to confirm that there are major differences in the way women and men think, Anna Karenina, a book from an old imperialistic era, and from another world, will offer the protagonists of "Anna in the tropics" an opportunity to look at themselves from a different perspective. The dialogues between the male and female characters revolving around the book and its characters are most revealing of the crisis society, especially the western society, was going through at the beginning of the twentieth century. In Act 1, Scene 3, Ofelia, Marela's mother, warns her younger daughter against the dangers of letting herself caught into the mirage of illusion. She is obviously forgetting that a the young age of 22, before having even went thorough the experience of a first big "adult" love, Marela is not actually able to discern between big dreams and illusions.

In Act 1, Scene 2, Marela, the innocent young girl, shows quite a when encouraging Juan Julian, the lector, to read Anna Karenina. Her sister, Conchita, nails the last nail into the coffin, when she supports this choice, in spite of Marela's warning: "MARELA: Ah, Anna Karenina will go right to Cheche's heart. The poor man. He won't be able to take it."(Cruz, ) The lector will do his job, and start reading to the workers. Since everybody was involved in the cigar making, they will all listen to him. The subsequent discussions...

The process will turn out to be slow and painful, but it will be liberating.
In spite of everything being different between the novel and reality in Tampa, there is one very good reason for people to listen to the story with increased interest: the wish to identify with another, to get transported into another world, the wish to understand another human being that has apparently nothing in common with on, yet makes everything sound so familiar. Even Ofelia, the grunded mother, agrees with the choice: "He chose the right book. There is nothing like reading a winter book in the middle of summer. It's like having a fan or an icebox by your side to relieve the heat and the caloric nights." (Act 1, Scene 3)

Scene 3 in Act 1 will reveal one reason for grief in one of the couples in the play. Form the discussions related to Chekhov's novel, it is obvious that men and women find different parts of it appealing to them. One discussion in particular, that between Conchita and her husband, Palomo, is presenting the truth about their current relationship, with a twist. The one that could identify with Chekhov's protagonist is not the woman, but the man. He is the one having an affair. The difference is that Conchita and Palomo appear to be reconciled with the situation. As the discussion between husband and wife progresses, so does the reader's understanding of their real situation. Getting past the not surprising practicality of the man and the equally not surprising inclination to dream of the woman, one is surprised to find out that the man was once equally inclined to dream and be poetic. When Conchita reminds him of their first encounter, although he refuses to acknowledge he was ever like that, something is letting one know that both of them might be striving to find what united them in the first place again: "CONCHITA: You married me because the day you met me, I gave you a cigar I had rolled especially for you and when you smoked it, you told me I had slipped into your mouth like a pearl diver. "PALOMO: As far as I can remember, I married you because I couldn't untie your father's hands from around my neck."

In contrast with the troubled relationship between Conchita and Palomo, and in spite of Santiago's troubles with money, drinking and gambling, Scene 4 in Act 1 reveals that Santiago and Ofelia, resonate with each other. First, they are communicating well. The fight, they ask questions, they criticize, but they stay on the same page. They are able to talk to each other in meaningful ways that is essential for the health of their relationship. It is another discussion about literature that will brilliantly end an entire scene that started with their fighting: "SANTIAGO: Talk to me about the novel. I can't always hear very well from up here. This fellow, Levin ... This character that I admire ... He's the one who is in love with the young girl in the story, isn't he? OFELIA: (A burst of energy.) Ah yes! He's in love with Kitty. Levin is in love with Kitty, and Kitty is in love with Vronsky. And Vronsky is in love with Anna Karenina. And Anna Karenina is married, but she's in love with Vronsky. Ay, everybody is in love in this book! 20 SANTIAGO: But for Levin ... For Levin there's only one woman. OFELIA: Yes, for him there's only one woman. SANTIAGO: (Full of love, he looks at her.) Ofelia. OFELIA: Yes. (Santiago swallows the gulp of love.)"

Act II will introduce another war characteristic of the new century: that between machines and humans. In spite of their purpose to support humans in their existence and make their life easier, machines act as a menace. They are not only a menace for those they are going to replace, they are also a menace for tradition.

Some people cannot help themselves seeing the machine as an enemy and not as a factor of progress, an enabler, a reason to progress themselves in their knowledge and skills. The changes brought by new technologies, the film industry and in the pace of life were threatening businesses that were failing to adapt. On the other side, Cheche is keen to apply these changes in the one sector where machines would actually diminish the quality and slowly destroy the product. Everyone else in the play, beside him, is aware that machines…